


No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear

by BlossomsintheMist



Category: Iron Man (Comic), Marvel 616
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Other, Past Relationship(s), Past Tony/Pepper - Freeform, Pepper Angst, Tony Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-11
Updated: 2012-11-11
Packaged: 2017-11-18 09:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/559524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlossomsintheMist/pseuds/BlossomsintheMist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony in the wake of Rumiko’s death struggles not to give into his emotions.  Pepper worries about him.  Tony/Rumiko, past Tony/Pepper, Marvel 616.  Title from C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed.  Meant as a precursor to both Avengers Disassembled and Extremis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear

He didn’t want to think about it.  He felt disloyal for it, and that in itself was a new, fresh pain, a throbbing ache whenever he thought about her, but he couldn’t afford it right now, couldn’t afford the breakdown lurking on the edges of his hard-won control, the control that started fraying whenever he thought about what had happened too long, whenever he remembered the smell of Rumiko’s perfume, the sound of her laugh or the shape of her smile, the silken smooth warmth of her skin.  He still expected her to call him, still caught himself thinking that he should send some flowers to apologize for ignoring her—and then realized that she was gone, and no amount of flowers would ever make up for what he had done to her this time.  And then his stomach would wrench, and he’d feel like he was falling, and he just—he couldn’t think about it, couldn’t lose control, because who knew if he’d ever get it back.  He had things to do.  If he just didn’t think, or feel, if he just kept going, kept working—

He’d get through this.  He couldn’t do anything for Rumiko now. He’d ruined her life and then got her killed.  Don’t let your daughters get involved with Tony Stark, he’d wanted to say to Fujikawa-san at the funeral, an inappropriate laugh trapped in the back of his throat, hysterical, that felt like if he let it out it might just turn into a sob, he’s trouble.  Look what happens to them then.

He wasn’t under any illusions that this wasn’t entirely his fault.  He knew one of his own messes when he saw one.

She’d deserved so much better than that.  Than him.  It was selfish of him to miss her when she was dead now because she had loved him.

That was what it came down to.  It always seemed to.  Janice, Heather, Whitney, and so many other women, dead because of him.  Pepper had lost her chance at having a child.  Yinsen had died because he had helped him, because Tony couldn’t save anyone.  Even Whiplash had died because of mistakes Tony had made.

He’d thought about drinking to push the pain further to the back of his mind.  He always thought of it—it was one of the things he hated most about himself.  But he  wouldn’t step that far, wouldn’t break.  At least not like that; he wasn’t going to be that, do that, because of this.  The Avengers needed better of him than that, people did, the United States did, the world did.  Rumiko had deserved better, needed better, too.

There was just one night he spend curled in on himself in his workshop, missing her, not crying, but close enough to it that he could feel the ache in the back of his throat, and another in a hotel room, sitting slumped in an uncomfortable chair, trying not to think about her, not to break down, digging his fingers into his palms while he told himself to ignore the minibar in the the corner of the room.

He couldn’t think about her, it would open the door to the yawning darkness that was the grief in the back of his mind, in his heart, and he would fall apart.  And he couldn’t do that.  So he found ways to keep going.

And Rumiko was still dead.  And it was still his fault.  But nothing was going to change that.

—

Pepper had known Tony a long time, and by now she knew things about him that most people didn’t, not just how he took his coffee (anyone who had ever worked for him knew that), or even how to approach him to get him to go through a stack of paperwork, but how he looked when he was in pain, when there was a tight little furrow between his eyes and his mouth was flat and hard, or the loose, careless smile he got when he was drunk.  She knew how he looked when he was in love, how he would tilt his head down to hide his eyes with his eyelashes even as he gave that same insouciant smirk as always and the look in his eyes when he thought no one was looking.  That was how she’d known how hard he’d fallen for Ms. Fujikawa.  That was how she knew how he was feeling now.

He hadn’t said a word about Rumiko since he’d returned from Japan.  Pepper had wanted to attend the funeral with him—she hadn’t been close to Ms. Fujikawa, but that wasn’t the point anymore; she’d thought someone should be with Tony—but he hadn’t been willing to allow it, and Happy had eventually convinced her to stop arguing with him and just let him go.  Tony had come back pale, even more drawn and exhausted than he had been before, with dark weary bruising under his eyes and a deep slump to his shoulders that seemed nearly permanent, and had immediately disappeared for three days on Iron Man business with hardly a word to either her or Happy.

He hadn’t spoken about Rumiko since.  That, more than anything, had Pepper worried.  It wasn’t that she’d expected Tony to cry it out, or even to talk about how he felt that the woman he’d loved had been killed to get to him.  No, she didn’t expect anything that emotionally healthy.  She knew Tony better than that.  But she also knew his tendency to try to keep everything he felt tightly shut up inside—better than most people, she guessed—and she knew the effects it had on him, how even when he himself thought he was handling something it was just eating away at him, driving him to be even more reckless, even more thoughtless, than usual.  She’d seen Tony attempt to deal with his grief by not dealing with it before, and she never wanted to again.  Either he’d succeed in the control of his emotions he was trying for, or he’d explode.  She wasn’t sure which would be worse.

She tried very hard not to think about alcohol.

Tony came back from whatever he’d been doing with bruises over his cheekbone and down his jaw that she had to use makeup to hide from a board meeting and a bleeding cut down his arm.  He tried to smile at her, to convince her that everything was all right or to convince himself, Pepper wasn’t sure.  When she tried to bring up Rumiko, his face froze and his jaw clenched.  He looked down at the floor and responded with one-word, terse, snappy answers for the rest of the conversation that were clearly purposefully obnoxious.  Pepper left annoyed, every click of her heels on the floor a punctuation of her irritation, but ended up worried, because she knew how Tony pushed people away when he was hurting.  He’d done it for years.

Tony wasn’t drinking, she was certain of that much, but he wasn’t dealing with it, either.  Happy had told her that he didn’t think the boss was sleeping.  She’d noticed the flatness of Tony’s expressions, except when he was trying to put on a show of emotion or charm, and even then his smile seemed forced, slow and rigid.  Tony had always worked hard, but he was working twice as much as normal, when he wasn’t off with the Avengers.   Ever since she’d been aware that Tony was also Iron Man, it had been obvious that he tended to throw himself into being a superhero whenever something had gone badly wrong in the rest of his life.  If it had been helping, that would have been one thing.  But he didn’t look any better.  The dull faraway look she’d seen in his eyes since Rumiko had been killed, that she was trying so hard not to think of as dead in and of itself, hadn’t changed.  The last time Pepper had seen it recede, even for a moment or two, had been when Rhodey had stopped by to talk to Tony about something.  She’d asked him as he was leaving if he’d managed to get anything about Rumiko’s death out of Tony, and he’d sighed and shaken his head, his own eyes sad and strained.  “He really loved that lady, Pepper,” he’d said.  “Just give him some time, okay?”

But she had, she wanted to say.  She’d given him time, and nothing was improving.  If anything, Tony just looked worse after Rhodey left.  What was even more alarming was that he was settling back into a routine.  Just one where he never addressed his grief or how he’d felt about Rumiko Fujikawa, and if Pepper knew him at all, he never would.

She wasn’t going to let that happen, though.  She wasn’t sure if she needed to resort to desperate measures yet, but she wasn’t going to wait around until she knew for sure, either.  Tony had been around to do paperwork a lot more lately than he typically was, even with his political duties, so she stopped after giving him a new stack and setting down his fifth cup of coffee of the last three hours in front of him.  “Coffee, Mr. Stark,” she said.

“Mmm,” he said, already running his eyes through the words on the top form, down toward the bottom of the page.

“You know, Tony,” she said, and he blinked and looked up at her.  She could almost see him refocus.  His eyes were clouded and bleary, the blue dull and tired, lined with red, sunken in his skull, with deep, violet-bruised shadows under them.  They were dry, and there was a smudge of ink along one high cheekbone, near another bruise, like he’d rubbed his thumb there and forgotten it.  He looked almost feverish.  “It’s all right to miss her,” she said.

He swallowed, she watched his throat work, his Adam’s apple bob, and his shoulders stiffened.  “Leave it alone, Potts,” he said, roughly, voice heavy and brusque, and turned back to the papers in front of him.

“I don’t think I will,” she said.  “Did you cry over her once?  You haven’t, have you?  I know how you felt about her.  This isn’t normal, Tony.  You can’t keep doing this.”

“I’m  _not_  normal,” he said.  “That’s the thing.  I have things to do.  Responsibilities.  I owe people my time and my attention.  I can't just sit in a corner crying my eyes out because I lost someone who—” he stopped.  Swallowed.  “Who mattered to me,” he finished and his voice was hoarse, creaky, like a broken record.

“Sure,” Pepper said.  “And what about Ms. Fujikawa—I mean, what about Rumiko?  What did you owe her?”

Tony dropped the stack of papers onto his desk and clenched his hand into a fist, his head going down.  “Better than what she got,” he said roughly.  “She’s gone.  Nothing I can do would matter to her now.”

“Don’t you think she’d want you to grieve over her?” Pepper asked.  She hadn’t known Rumiko well—and now she felt a little guilty for how determined she’d been not to get to know her better—but she felt certain of that much.

There was a moment of silence, and then Tony looked back at her, a crooked, heartbroken hint of a smile on his lips.  “Yes,” he said, “she would’ve been angry if I didn’t.”  But then his face fell, and he looked down at his hands again.  “I went to her funeral,” he said in that dead, dull voice that had become so familiar.  “I did my time.”

Pepper sucked in her breath.  “I should slap your face for saying something like that about a woman you loved,” she snapped.  “And she would have.  You  _loved_ her, Tony Stark.  I know you did.  And I know you miss her, and you’re grieving for her, and I won’t let you talk about it like that.”

“I can’t afford to—” Tony stopped and took a deep breath.  “I can’t afford to fall apart right now,” he said.

“And what,” Pepper demanded, on fire now, “you can afford to fall apart later?”

Tony’s shoulders hunched.  “No,” he said, sounding hunted.  “I can’t afford to fall apart.”

“So when are you going to?” Pepper asked.

“I’m not,” he told her.  He got up, turned his back, stared out the window of his office.

“Of course you’re not,” Pepper said.  “You’ve never fallen apart when you tried to keep all your emotions inside and deal with them on your own before.  Never.  Not once.”

Tony flinched.  “What do you want me to say?” he asked in a low voice, after a moment.  He’d wrapped his arms around himself, his fingers digging tightly into his biceps, and his head was down again.

“I want you to acknowledge what she meant to you,” Pepper said.  “What you lost.  That she was  _important_.  And you miss her.  And you loved her.  I want you to let it out, Tony.”

“Fine,” he snapped.  “I do miss her.  I—” his voice caught.  “I miss her so much, Pep,” he said in a hoarse whisper, and he fell back into his chair like his strings had been cut and buried his face in his hands.  His breath wavered, hitched, like he was on the verge of tears, thick and wet.  “I feel like I’m in a nightmare that won’t stop.  Ever since she died I … it’s like standing on the edge of a black hole, and if I think about her, I’ll fall past the event horizon and I’ll never get out.”  His hands fell to the table, and his shoulders shook, a deep, wrenching shudder.  “I can’t,” he said, strangled.  “I can’t talk about her.”

Pepper wanted to reach out, wanted to wrap her arms around him, but she knew Tony too well for that, knew what he’d accept, what he wouldn’t, what would make him draw back, away, close himself off again too fast to stop it.  But she couldn’t simply leave him like that.  She set the papers aside and sat down on the side of his desk, reaching out and taking his hand in one of her own.  He flinched, startled, but she hung on, not letting him pull away, and after a moment he wrapped his hand around hers and stared down at their entwined fingers.  His palm was damp with cold sweat, his fingers trembling.  “I thought she might actually be the one,” he said.  “Even though we fought, even though … we were a mess.  I thought maybe … someday.  And now she’s gone.”  He sounded desperate, his voice harsh and strained.  “I’m sorry,” he said, a crooked, self-deprecating, apologetic smile on his lips when he looked up at her.  “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.  I know that with what happened between us you can’t possibly want to hear it.”  He blinked, and his eyelashes looked damp, no matter what else, no matter what he might have said or protested.

“That doesn’t matter right now,” Pepper told him.  “I care about you, that’s all.  It doesn’t matter what happened in the past.  We’re friends, Tony.  Aren’t we?”

He shrugged.

“We are,” she told him, her voice as firm as she could make it, ignoring how much that hurt, the pang it sent through her.  “And as your  _friend_ , I’m not going to leave you alone with this.”

He just sat there for a moment, not responding, breathing unsteadily, his eyes on their hands.  His lashes fluttered, and then he took a deep breath and blew it out again, his fingers tightening against hers.  “But I have to deal with it on my own, Pep,” he said eventually, his voice rough and scratchy, hitching on the words.  “No one can help me with that.  I’m going to be alone one way or another.”

“No, no one can deal with your grief for you,” Pepper said.  She swallowed.  Her throat hurt.  “But we can be here with you while you feel it.  We can help.”  Impulsively, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to the top of Tony’s head, feeling the soft wave of his hair.  He made a choking noise, but didn’t pull away, so she stayed like that, turning to rest her cheek against his hair, leaving their hands entwined and resting one hand on his shoulder.

They stayed like that for a long time, while Pepper listened to Tony’s unsteady breathing.

“I do miss her,” he said after a moment, and his voice was so broken and raw.  “I … I really miss her." He sighed, thick and wet, and Pepper could hear it hitch in his throat.  After a moment he spoke again, low. "Why does everyone leave, Pepper?  Why do I get everyone I care about hurt or killed?”

Pepper bit her lip.  “It wasn’t your fault, Tony,” she said.  She sat up, pressed her hand to his cheek.  “It wasn’t your fault that Rumiko got killed by a madman who was trying to hurt you, and it wouldn’t have been your fault if me or Happy had been killed by him, either.  That was his doing, not yours.”

Tony’s mouth quirked mirthlessly, and he shook his head, pulling away.  “He was gunning for me,” he said.  “Rumiko wouldn’t have been there if not for me.  That makes it my fault two different ways.”  He patted Pepper’s hand and pulled it away.  “Thanks,” he said.  “I think … yeah, it was good to talk about it.  But I’ve got work to do.”

Pepper wanted to scream.  “You have to promise me you won’t do this again,” she said.  “Promise me you’re not just going to bury this so deep down you never think about it again and that you’ll actually try to deal with what happened.”

“Sure,” Tony said, not looking at her.  “I promise.”

A week later, she watched on television as he insulted the Latverian ambassador in front of the entire United Nations, and she knew he was never going to deal with it at all.  And nothing was going to change that.


End file.
